Category Archives: Interaction Design

Heuristics are “rule-of-thumb” design principles, rules, and characteristics that are stated in broad terms and are often difficult to specify precisely. Assessing whether a product exhibits the qualities embodied in a heuristic is thus a subjective affair. If you inspect … Continue reading →

Once your product has been released, understanding how it is actually being used very valuable. Analytics refers to the use of instrumentation to record data on users’ activities, followed by the analysis the collected data to detect trends and patterns. … Continue reading →

If we wanted to attempt to quantify the cognitive load — i.e., the thinking and effort involved — for performing a particular task, we could write out a list of the actions or operations that a user would have to … Continue reading →

A product that is ergonomic is designed in a way that helps reduces physical discomfort, stress, strain, fatigue, and potential injury during operation. While ergonomics is usually associated with physical products, the design of the a software application’s interface also … Continue reading →

In document- and content-oriented applications and websites, the quality of the user experience often depends on the user being able to find what she is looking for, and so effective search functionality becomes critical when there is a large repository … Continue reading →

Many applications are centered around a set of features, tasks, actions, operations, business processes, or use cases that share a similar pattern of interaction. For example: A paint program has a toolbar or palette with various drawing tools. Clicking on … Continue reading →

My book, Designing Usable Apps, is now available!

Welcome!

Hi, I'm Kevin Matz, founder of Winchelsea Systems Ltd. and creator of the ChapterLab word-processing app. This is my blog about usability and UX design for websites and software products. Let me know what you think!